After surpassing passenger projections for its first year of service, Tulum International Airport continues to expand connectivity, welcoming two new flights this week.
On Tuesday, Colombia’s Avianca Airlines made its maiden flight to Tulum, arriving from Bogotá at 4 p.m. local time with 160 passengers on board, according to the newspaper La Jornada Maya.
Mario Cruz Rodríguez, the president of Tulum’s Tourism Promotion Council, was one of the passengers, returning home after spending a week in Colombia on Council business.
Arriving with him was an assemblage of Colombian reporters and tourism industry operators who were flown in on a “fam trip” to familiarize themselves with the amenities and attractions of the popular resort area on the Caribbean coast of Quintana Roo.
The Avianca plane was the first flight to arrive in Tulum from outside North America.
On Thursday, the airport welcoming committee sprung into action again, treating the first trans-Atlantic arrival to a water arch salute. That flight, operated by Discover Airlines, came in from Frankfurt, Germany, with 199 passengers on board.
Discover — a leisure airline owned by Lufthansa — runs the Frankfurt-Tulum route on a seasonal basis. It will land at Tulum International every Thursday and Sunday until April 27, 2025.
Quintana Roo Governor Mara Lezama and German Ambassador Clemens von Goetze led the welcome ceremony, according to the newspaper Riviera Maya News.
Lezama celebrated the occasion by saying the new flights “[contribute] to the confidence generated by our tourist destinations and … by national and international business groups and investors,” adding that it indicates a promising future for the Mexican Caribbean.
Von Goetze also spoke at the ceremony. “The inauguration of this flight represents more than an air connection,” the ambassador said. “It is a bridge between Mexico and Germany.”
Thursday’s arrival also marked the first landing of a wide-body aircraft at the new airport which opened its doors on Dec. 1, 2023, Riviera Maya News reported.
In its first year of operations, the Tulum airport surpassed its target of transporting 700,000 passengers. On Dec. 1, 2024, airport officials announced that Tulum International Airport had received 1,074,000 passengers and had carried out 8,500 air operations.
More new routes will be inaugurated before the end of the year. Canada’s Air Transat will begin flights from Montreal and Quebec on Dec. 16 and Dec. 18, respectively.
With reports from La Jornada Maya and Riviera Maya News
